Paragraph Reviews 12/10/10

Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.


Love and Other Drugs

Watch the two-minute green band trailer and you know exactly how this movie goes, more or less.  Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway fall in love, separate, and get back together again.  Welcome to the standard rom-com formula, unchanged since the beginning of time.  That’s not to say the movie isn’t enjoyable (up until the trite ending, which everyone sees a mile away); there is great chemistry between Gyllenhaal’s take on a career-minded, smart-ass, sweet-talking med salesman and Hathaway’s sarcastic, quasi-misanthropic, surprisingly charming twenty-something with Parkinson’s.  Add a dash of breasts, a ton of male ass, and many many boner jokes (the character is selling Viagra, after all), and you’ve got a decent date movie, even if the first third (which is mainly focused on career moves and less on romance) is more interesting than the eye-roll-worthy rest.

Rating: 6

The Walking Dead – Season 1

After wrapping the first season up, in an odd move for a TV series, the entire writing staff was reportedly fired; rumor is the show will be based more or less on scripts from the creators or freelance writers.  And that is good news, in my opinion – while the show had plenty to offer in suspense and thrills, the acting was subpar and the characters (introduced a mile a minute, it seemed like) were not well developed.  Still, the first season had its moments of brilliance; the show is best when the pacing is slower.  And now that there is a definite future for the Walking Dead, it can only improve what it seemed to have rushed in the beginning.

Rating: 8

T.I. – No Mercy

Introspection is the new hip-hop, apparently.  Some thrive on it (Drake) and some stage a successful commercial comeback with it, even if the result is obviously weak (Eminem).  T.I., who is again in prison, was supposed to reign in 2010 as a free man with a triumphant comeback.  At least that’s what bad-ass single “I’m Back” averted to the world (which is not on the album, unfortunately).  It was bombastic, throwback T.I. – it got me pumped.  But this shit, released finally after a long delay (promotion plans were halted when the rapper was arrested again and sent back to prison for parole vioation), plays the self-referential, woe-is-me card that mainstream rappers are playing nowadays.  It’s not T.I.  It’s not genuine.  It’s not great, either.

Rating: 4


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